After a much-needed nap, Apple Bloom awoke to find herself tucked in her bed back at Sweet Apple Acres. "Uhhh..." she groaned, rubbing her eyes as she tried to regain her bearings. "What... What happened? How did I get back here?" she asked, despite the fact that nopony else was in the room.
Stumbling out of bed, Apple Bloom shook her head and reached back into her memory, trying to piece together the events of the night before. She seemed to recall an argument with her sister about something, but her exhaustion had erased the memory of exactly what that something was. She knew she hadn't been in her room, though—she had been... Where? It took a moment for the answer to come to her: The library, of course! She had been working with her fellow Cutie Mark Crusaders, on their story about—
"Oh, ponyfeathers! The story!" she sputtered, as the image of Greased Lightning being carted away on a stretcher popped into her mind. "We gotta finish that story!" She bounced out of bed, grabbed her saddlebags, and raced out of the room.
Downstairs, Applejack was taking a tray of freshly-baked apple fritters over to the kitchen table to cool when a yellow blur sped by and nearly knocked her off of her hooves. "Land sakes!" she shouted, trying desperately to keep her balance while maintaining her hold on the fritter tray. "Good gravy, Apple Bloom!" Applejack scolded her sister, who was already heading out the front door. "Watch where you're goin' when you're goin' like that!"
"Sorry, sis!" Apple Bloom called back. "I've got to get back to the library right away! Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle are waitin' for me!"
"Hold your horses!" Applejack ordered, causing her sister to come to a screeching halt just beyond the front porch. "Your friends ain't at the library right now," Applejack revealed, stepping out onto the porch. "They went with Rainbow this mornin' to go talk to that Turbo feller in Baltimare."
"What?!" Apple Bloom's face fell at the realization. "They went without me? But... But we're a team! We're supposed to work together to earn our cutie marks!" A tear began to roll down her cheek. "Why... Why would they just... Abandon me like that?" she sniffled.
"It ain't their fault," Applejack admitted. "They wanted to bring you along, but you weren't in any condition to travel right then, so I wouldn't let them."
"You... You didn't let me go?" Apple Bloom glared at her sister, her sadness quickly overwhelmed by anger. "How... How could you?" she demanded. "This could've been my chance to find my special talent and finally earn my cutie mark, and you... You ruined it! You've ruined everything!" Apple Bloom turned away from her sister, as her eyes began to water again. "Some big sister you are," she huffed.
The intensity of Apple Bloom's reaction caught Applejack off guard. "Gosh, sugarcube, I'm sorry," she apologized. "I know this story means a lot to you and all, but you've been workin' yourself to death lately, and..."
"Oh, forget it!" Apple Bloom snapped, her anger giving way to cold rationality. "I ain't got time to argue—I've got to get back to the library! I've still got ten years of those papers to go through!" With that, the little filly turned away and ran off in the direction of Twilight's house, leaving a stunned Applejack in her wake.
Applejack shook her head. "Golly..." she said to herself. "Apple Bloom still seems awfully moody. I don't know if that Lightnin' feller is dead or not, but his story's sure hauntin' my sister..."
While Apple Bloom was rushing back to the library, her friends Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo were just reaching the outskirts of the port city of Baltimare. "We made it!" Scootaloo exclaimed. "So this is what Baltimare looks like..."
Sweetie Belle looked down apprehensively at the soulless rows of brick warehouses below. "Wow... It's so... So... Red..." she observed.
"Yep," Rainbow Dash confirmed, "this place looks the same as it always did: Dreary. I never understood why anypony actually wanted to live here." Doing a quick scan of the area, she spied a large clock atop one of the buildings. "First things first," she decided. "Did we break the three-hour mark?" Swooping down to get a better view of the time, Rainbow's face fell as she saw the position of the clock's hands. "Three and a half hours?" she grumbled. "This stupid thing must be running fast or something!"
"It definitely felt faster than three hours," Scootaloo said. "No worries—I'll bet we break three hours on the way back for sure!"
"...Before we do," Sweetie Belle interrupted, "let's see if we can talk to Turbo Jet."
"Right, right, right..." Rainbow Dash looked down at the hastily-scribbled address she had written on her front leg. "It says here he's living on Ponderosa Boulevard," she informed the two crusaders. "If I remember right, that's just a little south of here..."
Soaring back above the industrial section of town, Rainbow Dash charted a course to a more residential-looking area on the southern end of the city. "I think it's that one!" she yelled to the fillies, pointing down vaguely at one of the streets below as she darted down to ground level to test her hypothesis. "Aw, yeah!" she shouted in triumph, reading the 'PONDEROSA BOULEVARD' sign that validated her guess.
A few more minutes of searching brought the trio to 1158 Ponderosa Boulevard, a small, brown house surrounded by a white picket fence. "I guess this is it," Rainbow declared, unhitching her cart as the fillies hopped out onto the sidewalk. "Kind of drab, but it fits right in with the rest of this crummy town."
Scootaloo immediately bolted for the front door. "Let's do this!" she said to Sweetie Belle. "Time to interrogate this guy and make him confess!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Rainbow interrupted, quickly flying over to the front door to head off Scootaloo. "First of all," she explained, "if you really want somepony to talk to you, the last thing you want to do is start accusing them of a crime." She turned and rang the doorbell. "Just be... Gentle, okay?" she recommended. "Believe me, you aren't the only ponies who've asked him about this."
Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo walked over and stood behind Rainbow Dash, waiting with bated breath for their target to appear. When the door finally swung open, however, the crusaders were disappointed to only see a pair of pegasus fillies standing in the doorway. One of the fillies was dark-blue, much darker than Rainbow, and her blond mane was a tangled mess of curls. The other filly had a purple coloring similar to Twilight's, and wore her dark-brown hair combed straight down, much the way Pinkie Pie's had looked the day she had forgotten her birthday. What made the scene even more disheartening was that both fillies, despite looking slightly younger than Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, already had their cutie marks: The blue pegasus sported a simple shooting star, while the purple one had a strange-looking equation on her flank. "Who are you?" the purple filly asked.
The sight of the two fillies seemed to throw Rainbow Dash for a loop as well. "Um... Hey there... Girls..." she replied. "We're, uh, looking for somepony named Turbo Jet... Is he... Here, by any chance?"
Without a word, the purple filly turned and walked back into the house. "DAAAAAADDD!" she shouted. "Some rainbow pony's here to see you!"
"Dad?" Rainbow nearly choked on the word. "Seriously? Geez, I didn't think he was that old..."
The blue filly remained in the doorway, staring awkwardly at the rainbow-maned pony before her. "Are... Are you... Rainbow Dash?" she inquired, in a timid voice.
Rainbow's eyes sparkled at the recognition. "Why, yes... Yes, I am," she answered.
"Oh." With that, the blue filly turned around, aimed, and proceeded to buck Rainbow Dash in the chest with all her might, causing Rainbow's eyes to bulge out and bringing the rainbow-maned pegasus to her knees. "Ow!" she exclaimed. "Hey! What gives?"
"That's for never letting my daddy win!" the blue filly informed her larger counterpart.
A gray-coated mare, who appeared a bit older than Rainbow Dash, suddenly appeared in the doorway. "Shooting Star!" she scolded the young blue filly. "We do not go around kicking people who come to our house, do you understand me?"
"But mooommmm," Shooting Star insisted, as she pointed at Rainbow Dash, "she was mean to dad!"
"I'm sure that your father will deal with that in good time," the gray pony said. "Now, I want you apologize to this nice young lady and tell her you're sorry for hurting her."
The blue filly sighed, and turned to face Rainbow Dash again. "I'm sorry," she muttered, without a hint of repentance in her voice.
"Shooting Star..." The gray mare threatened in a motherly, once-more-with-feeling-or-you're-grounded tone.
"Fine," the dark blue filly grumbled. "I'm sorry if I hurt you, Mrs. Dash."
I'll ignore that 'Mrs.' crack for now, Rainbow thought to herself. "Hey, no problem," she told the filly. "It, uh, takes a lot more than that to hurt a pony who's in tip-top condition like I am!"
The dark-blue filly ignored Rainbow's explanation. "Can I go now?" she asked her mother.
"Yes, you may," the gray pony agreed. She watched as the blue filly skittered back into the house, then turned back to Rainbow Dash. "I'm sorry about that," she said. "Shooting Star can be a bit protective of her dad's legacy."
"What leg—I mean, I understand," Rainbow Dash replied.
"My husband will be with you in just a moment. Please, come in," the gray mare offered. She turned and led the three ponies on her doorstep into a small room, with four chairs arranged around a wooden table in the center. "I have to go keep an eye on my girls, but you and your foals can wait here," the gray mare said.
"My... Foals?" Rainbow Dash blushed at the implication. "W... Wait!" she called after the gray pony. "You don't understand! They're not mine!"
Scootaloo, on the other hoof, couldn't make a smile big enough to express her joy. "We just got mistaken for Rainbow Dash's daughters!" she squealed to Sweetie Belle. "Best. Day. Ever!"
"It's a good thing we came with Rainbow Dash and not my sister," Sweetie Belle commented. "Last time somepony asked Rarity if I was her daughter, she knocked out two of the guy's teeth."
After another minute of waiting, Turbo Jet, a tan-colored pegasus with a short, black mane and a day's growth of stubble on his chin, finally entered the room. His eyes lit up at the sight of his former opponent. "Well, I'll be," he uttered in disbelief, "if it isn't the Rainbow Dash herself. Gosh, it's been ages, hasn't it?"
"It has," Rainbow Dash agreed, pointing to Turbo's head. "I see you finally took my advice and got rid of that dorky long hair you had."
"Yeah, I had to switch to a combover," Turbo Jet admitted. "Getting old'll do that to you." He looked the rainbow-maned pony up and down. "I've gotta admit, you haven't changed at all," he declared. "You still look like the brash filly just out of flight school I met years ago. The same one, incidentally, that told me I flew like I had a cement block tied to my tail."
"Yeah, well... I, uh, meant that in the nicest way possible," Rainbow offered sheepishly.
Sweetie Belle cleared her throat, deciding that it was time to get down to business. "Greetings, Mr. Jet," she began. "My name is Sweetie Belle, and we are..."
"Oh!" Turbo exclaimed, looking over at the two fillies next to Rainbow Dash. "Are these... Your foals?" he asked innocently. He smiled at Scootaloo (whose head nearly exploded with happiness at the remark), but gave Sweetie Belle a strange look. "Wait... A unicorn?" He leaned over close to Rainbow Dash, a small smirk spreading on his face. "Dare I ask how many fathers?"
"Get outta here!" Rainbow Dash responded, giving Turbo a shove. "They're not mine!"
"Except in her dreams," Sweetie Belle added, gesturing towards Scootaloo as she spoke. "Actually, Mr. Jet, my associate Scootaloo and I are with the Foal Free Press, and we'd like to interview you for our upcoming article."
"You do?" Turbo Jet arched an eyebrow at the strange request. "You want to interview me? Gosh, I haven't been interviewed in years... What would you like to know?"
Rainbow Dash leaned back over towards Turbo Jet. "Sorry to do this to you, TJ," she apologized in a whisper, "but... They want to ask you about the day you-know-who lost his you-know-what."
Turbo frowned at the realization. "Aw, man, really?" he muttered. "I've told that story a thousand times—couldn't they just look it up somewhere? I got sick of being called a liar years ago."
"They wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth," Rainbow Dash explained. "Look, just humor them for me, would you? They think that writing this story will finally get them their cutie marks, and came all the way from Ponyville just to talk to you. Can't you give them something?"
Turbo sighed. "I suppose," he conceded, looking back over at the fillies. "Okay, you two," he said, "my memory isn't what it used to be, but if you wanna ask about Greased Lightning... I'll do my best."
"Great!" Sweetie Belle replied. "So, let's start at the beginning: When did you first meet Greased Lightning?"
Turbo Jet shook his head and smiled. "I'll never forget that day, no matter how old I get," he began. "It was at the Equestria Junior Championship Invitational, my last race as a Junior Speedster. I'd trained really hard and totally dominated the local Speedster circuit, so I really thought I had a chance to win."
"Did you?" Scootaloo interrupted.
"Are you kidding?" Turbo laughed. "The moment I stepped up to the starting line, I looked over at the guy next to me and thought, 'Holy cloud, I have to race against that? This guy is all muscle!' I'd heard stories about some awesome flyer out of Cloudsdale, but him? He looked like he should have had his own pegasus card!"
"Was that Greased Lightning?" Sweetie Belle inquired.
"It must have been. All the fillies used that name whenever they screamed at him to marry them," Turbo Jet confirmed, a revelation that made Rainbow Dash throw up a little in her mouth. "He didn't notice, though," Turbo continued. "He didn't acknowledge them, or me, or anypony. He just stared straight ahead and waited for the race to start."
"Did it work?" Scootaloo asked. "Did he win?"
"By about half a mile," Turbo Jet said. "I was kind of star-struck by him, so I didn't get a great start, but I still finished fourth, and I could've been third if I'd have had better cornering technique."
"Talk about your pro racing career," Sweetie Belle requested, doing her best impersonation of an investigative journalist. "How did Greased Lightning affect it?"
Turbo looked down and stared silently at the floor for about thirty seconds. "You know," he finally answered, "up until that day at the Derby, Lightning didn't really effect me at all. He usually beat me, of course, but so did a lot of other ponies. I dunno what Dash here has told you about me, but my daughter Linny says that..."
"Linny?" Rainbow Dash gave Turbo Jet a puzzled look upon hearing the unusual name.
"It's short for Linear Algebra," Turbo pointed out. "I tell you, there aren't enough math books in the world to keep her occupied. My wife tells me it's the universe paying me back for all the classes I cut in school."
That sounds awfully familiar, Rainbow Dash thought to herself, recalling the last time Twilight had tried to talk to her about some dead pony's number theories.
"Anyway," Turbo Jet continued, "Linny doesn't really care much about racing, but she tells me that my average finishing position was about 17th, and I generated an average wingpower score of 12.4."
"Really?" Scootaloo interrupted. "But the average wingpower for racers these days is..."
"14.7!" Turbo Jet and Scootaloo said in unison.
"Yep," Turbo confirmed sadly. "Linny says ponies fly a little bit faster now, but not by much." He offered a melancholy sigh. "The bottom line is, if Greased Lightning hadn't been around... Well, the difference between 16 and 17 ponies beating you isn't much."
"So why didn't you so something about it?" Rainbow asked, hijacking the interview. "Why didn't you try to be, you know, less lame?"
"I did try!" Turbo Jet insisted. "I gave up junk food, I got 10 hours of sleep every night, I did a hundred crunches and pushups every morning and night, I flew to the top of Smokey Mountain and back three times a week... I did everything I could think of to be the best racer possible, and all it ever got me was, well, 17th." He turned and began staring at the wall. "Do you have any idea how depressing it is to realize that no matter how hard you work, there are still twenty ponies who are better than you at your own special talent?" he asked his interviewers rhetorically.
"Gosh, no," Scootaloo replied. "That would be awful."
"Actually, I suppose I owe Greasy for that revelation," Turbo said. "I remember this one time we raced up in Vanhoover—you know, Rainbow, that rally race they have every fall? Well, the night before the race, Greased Lightning goes out partying, and comes back the next morning with the worst case of Roxy Flu that I had ever seen."
Rainbow Dash couldn't help but chuckle at the thought. "I had a couple bad cases of that myself," she admitted.
"Anyway, Greased Lightning comes in the next day, hangover and all," Turbo Jet continued, "and proceeds to absolutely torch us in the race—I mean, he must have beat us all by a good three minutes or so. Me, I get collected in a pileup halfway through the race because Three Wide, as always, decided to stick his nose where it shouldn't have been, and I sprain a wing and wind up dead last. After the race, while I'm stuck in the infirmary getting treatment, Lightning suddenly stumbles in, still holding his trophy. The nurse made some fuss about how he shouldn't have been able to race in his condition, so Lightning looks over at me, shrugs, and tells the nurse, "I guess I'm just good like that." Turbo shook his head, and turned his gaze back to the fillies. "My dream of being the best flyer ever died right then and there," he said. "If I couldn't beat somepony like that at his worst... What could I ever do against anything better?"
Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo exchanged nervous glances, unsure of how to respond.
Turbo Jet took a deep breath and tried to regain his focus. "I'm sorry, I'm just rambling," he apologized. "You two aren't here to talk about me—you wanted to talk about Lightning's crash."
"Well, yes... If you want to," Sweetie Belle offered. "We don't want to make you upset..."
Turbo shrugged. "What the heck," he decided. "It's the only thing I'll ever be remembered for. I might as well accept it." He took another deep breath to steady himself, and began his tale. "It happened at the Fillydelphia Preakness," he recalled. "The Preakness isn't a major race on the schedule, and a lot of guys—heck, even me on occasion—would skip it to rest up for the Cloudsdale Derby. Of course, I didn't skip it that year."
"So if nopony cared about the Preakness, why did Greased Lightning race in it?" Scootaloo wondered.
"Lightning didn't miss much of anything that year," Turbo Jet replied. "For a while there, he'd gotten kind of caught up in his own celebrity—all-night parties, famous fillies—and had started to let his concentration and training lapse. Granted, he still flew circles around the rest of us, but his flying times had started to slip a bit. That year, though, he went on a mission to prove he was still the best."
Turbo's answer confused Sweetie Belle a bit. "If he kept winning," she asked, "why did he think he had something to prove?"
"He never talked about it," Turbo Jet explained, "but... Let's just say he could see somepony gaining on him."
"Really? Who was he worried about?" Scootaloo inquired.
"Some hot-shot filly from Cloudsdale who had been smashing all of his Junior Speedster records," Turbo Jet revealed, looking over at Rainbow Dash. "Sound familiar?"
"Really?" Rainbow's voice carried a twinge of surprise for a moment, but her cynicism quickly drowned it out. "Sounds about right. I always knew he was a coward."
"I wouldn't go that far," Turbo countered. "Anyway, I had an exceptionally miserable couple of weeks leading up to the Preakness—I'd crashed out of a couple of races earlier in the year and hadn't yet worked my way back into shape, which meant my average finishing spot dropped to something decidedly below average. Of course, this also meant a serious drop in income, which reduced me to surviving on mulch and leaves, and soured my wife on the whole 'racing as a viable career' idea... All in all, I wasn't in a real good mood at that point."
"Wait... What do you mean, 'your wife'?" Rainbow objected. "You never told me you had a wife!"
"I didn't have one when I met you," Turbo clarified. "My wife became my ex-wife not long after the accident. Anyway, I knew I was in trouble the minute the race started—I could barely keep myself off the ground, let alone keep up with the rest of the pack. I must have been ten laps down by the halfway point, and probably should have been even farther back."
Sweetie Belle opened her mouth to ask another question, but Scootaloo cut her off. "Um, Mr. Turbo?" Scootaloo asked. "Is there a bathroom I could use?"
"Nope," Turbo Jet answered, trying to stifle a smirk. "The house didn't come with one. If you ask nicely, though, the neighbors might you use theirs." He laughed at Scootaloo's shocked expression. "I'm only kidding!" he admitted, gesturing towards the hallway behind him. "It's the first door on the left."
"I see your sense of humor hasn't gotten any better since I last saw you," Rainbow said as Scootaloo scurried off in the direction of the commode.
"So, if you didn't feel very good," Sweetie Belle inquired, "why did you keep racing? Why didn't you just stop?"
"What are you talking about?" Rainbow Dash scoffed. "You don't just stop racing if things don't go your way! You grit your teeth, dig deep, and fight your way through!"
"Couldn't have said it better myself," Turbo Jet agreed. "Besides, if you keep going, you can beat all the guys who couldn't, which meant more prize money."
"I see," Sweetie Belle said. "What do you remember about the accident itself?"
Turbo Jet took a deep breath. "I remember being really, really angry," he recalled. "Not to mention sore, and tired, and depressed... I was just frustrated with how my life had been up to that point, and I desperately wanted to do something about it."
"And that something was wrecking Greased Lightning?" Sweetie Belle hypothesized.
"No!" Turbo Jet stated emphatically. "Well, okay, yes, it ended up that way, but I never meant to hurt anypony. I just... I saw him coming up behind me to lap me again, and something inside my head snapped, and I told myself, 'If you want things to change, then start right now. Give that hot-shot a run for his money, and show him that he can't just walk all over you.'"
"So what did you do? Punch Lightning in the face?" Rainbow asked. "That's what I would have done."
"No," Turbo Jet revealed. "I dug deep, summoned all the strength, determination, and anger I could muster, and I started flying like my tail was on fire." He shook his head and sighed. "Not the smartest decision I ever made," he declared.
"Is that when the crash happened?" Sweetie Belle wondered.
"Just about," Turbo Jet replied. "I did everything I could to fly faster, but Greasy still caught up to me by the next turn. I tried to hold my speed and hug the inside of the corner, but my wings faltered, and I lost control. In the end, I barely turned at all—I just kind of rammed headfirst into Greased Lightning, and we both went down. I face-planted on a rock and blacked out for a few seconds, so I didn't see what happened to Lightning, but when I came to, I saw where he had left the track and crashed into the woods."
"Did you at least stop at see if he was okay?" Sweetie Belle asked.
"No," Turbo said. "As soon as I came to, I did a quick diagnostic check, decided that I didn't feel any more pain than I did before the crash, and went right back to racing." He hesitated for a moment, realizing how callous his statement would sound to a non-racing unicorn. "Back in school, racers were always told that if you crashed in a race, you needed to get back to flying as quickly as possible, and leave the rescuing to the trained professionals," he explained. "Truth be known, though, I would like to have that one back. I didn't realize how bad Lightning was hurt."
"So that's your story, then?" Sweetie Belle pressed. "It was nothing more than a freak accident?"
"Yes," Turbo Jet repeated.
Sweetie Belle looked quizzically at Turbo Jet. Putting the pieces together in her mind, she decided that something in his story didn't quite add up, and that she needed to turn the screws a little to gather more information. "I'll be honest with you, Mr. Jet," she announced, trying to make her voice sound as mature and confident as possible, "I'm not convinced you're telling me the whole story here. You entered this race solely because you didn't have any money, and you said yourself that if you kept racing, you'd make more money than ponies who couldn't. I'm sure you're well aware of the rumors surrounding this crash."
Turbo Jet's eyes narrowed, as he did not appreciate having his moral fiber questioned by a clueless filly. "Look here," he insisted. "I may not have been the fastest or most talented pony in the world, but I always prided myself on always playing fair and acting with integrity!" He banged his hoof on the table for emphasis. "Let me be perfectly clear," he announced. "I have never taken money from gamblers, I have never taken orders from gamblers... Heck, I've never even talked with gamblers! Everything I did during my career was on the up-and-up, and anypony who says otherwise is lying through their teeth."
"Oh yeah?" All of a sudden, Scootaloo burst back into the room. As the pegasus filly reached the table, she reached back and pulled a small slip of paper out of her saddlebag, then spit it onto the table. "Explain this!" Scootaloo demanded, pointing her hoof at the paper.
Sweetie Belle peered around Scootaloo's pointing leg to take a look at the paper the pegasus had produced. "What is that?"
"N-Nothing! Nothing at all!" Turbo Jet responded. He reached for the paper, but Rainbow Dash shoved him away from the table before he could reach it.
"Well, well... What have we got here, Mr. Holier-Than-Thou?" Rainbow Dash asked rhetorically, looking at the numbers written on the paper before her.
"It's a bank statement!" Scootaloo shouted. "It shows that somepony deposited 4,000 bits in that account five days before the Preakness!"
A quick scan of the document verified Scootaloo's claim. "So it does," Rainbow Dash agreed, "so it does." She looked over at Turbo Jet, who had started to break out in a sweat. "Who's lying through their teeth now, hmm?"
"W-What are you talking about?" Turbo Jet stammered. "That slip doesn't prove anything! It doesn't even have a name on it!"
"No, but this does!" Scootaloo reached back into her saddlebag and pulled out another paper, flinging it onto the table with a flourish.
Sweetie Belle examined the new piece of evidence Scootaloo had provided. "TJ," she read aloud, "I trust that this will be enough to cover everything. Please keep this on the down-low—I have enough trouble hanging onto money as it is." She gazed at the unintelligible scribble at the bottom of the note. "Whose signature is that?"
Rainbow joined Sweetie Belle in looking at the signature. "Wait a minute," she said. "I know I've seen that before..."
Scootaloo pointed an accusatory hoof in Turbo Jet's direction. "All right, pal," she demanded, "fess up! Who paid you off? How many bits did Los Pegasus have riding on this? Was this supposed to be a 'kill' or 'maim' operation?"
Turbo Jet stood there in stunned silence, his mouth hanging open and his brain overloaded by the events of the past minute. "Who— Wha— Where did you get this?" he finally asked.
Scootaloo folded her front legs and glared defiantly at Turbo Jet. "A good reporter never reveals her sources!" she proclaimed. "Now spill the beans already!"
"But... But..." Turbo sputtered weakly.
"Listen to the child, dear." Everypony turned towards the hallway entrance Scootaloo had emerged from. This time, however, the voice belonged to the gray mare who had greeted Rainbow and the crusaders at the front door. "These are probably the least hostile members of the media you'll have to deal with, and certainly the cutest," the gray pony continued.
"Honey?" Turbo looked over at his wife, a shocked expression crossing his face. "You gave them those papers?"
"That's right," the gray mare confirmed.
"B-But why?" Turbo Jet asked.
"Because I'm tired of running into ponies on the street and watching them look away and whisper to each other," the gray pony responded. "Because Shooting Star got in a fight last week defending her father's honor from some colt who called you a sell-out. Because Greased Lightning is probably dead and rotting away in some roadside ditch right now." She walked over and put a leg across her husband's shoulders. "Because it's time," she concluded.
Turbo Jet began to wilt under the purposeful gaze of his wife. "I-I can't," he insisted. "I'm a pony of my word, and I-I promised."
"Well, I didn't," the gray pony stated flatly. "Either you tell them, or I will."
Looking into the gray pony's eyes, Turbo Jet realized that his wife was dead serious. "I guess you're right," he admitted, letting out a deep sigh. "It probably doesn't matter anymore."
The gray mare turned back towards Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. "My husband did accept money from somepony before the Preakness," she revealed.
"No way..." Rainbow Dash whispered, shaking her head. "I always knew you were lame, TJ, but this?"
"It's not what you think," the gray pony said.
"Well, don't keep us in suspense!" Scootaloo implored, motioning for Sweetie Belle to grab a pencil. "Who ordered the fix? Who bankrolled this operation?"
Turbo Jet paused, and took a deep breath to steady himself. "I got the money from Greased Lightning," he finally replied.